3 am
by Redlance-ck
Summary: Chloe isn't this kind of girl. [One shot]


**Disclaimer** : Characters don't belong to me. I'm just borrowing them.

 **A/N** : Written for Bechloe88, after a very in-depth, all caps discussion of Chloe's moves during the Convention performance. Posted as part of Bechloe Week. Prompt #4 - 3am

 **High School AU.**

* * *

Chloe isn't this kind of girl.

She gets good grades, is captain of the debate team, has a four-point-oh grade point average and her attendance record is immaculate. With the exception of a bout of whooping cough in second grade, but she doesn't count that because they'd **forced** her to stay home, even after she'd gotten dressed and packed her lunch box.

Chloe's the kind of girl that never disappoints. She's the kind of girl that gets along with everyone, literally everyone, and she's the kind of girl that the teachers always use as an example. But she isn't the kind of girl who lets that go to her head. She isn't the kind of girl who thinks less of people just because they aren't as 'proficient' at this whole High School thing as she is.

She isn't the kind of girl that sneaks out at three a.m. because girls like Beca Mitchell come knocking at her bedroom window. Blue eyes shining like the night sky beneath thick boarders of eye-liner, beseeching Chloe, urging her to open the window "just for a second". She isn't the kind of girl that has to take a moment to catch her breath when girls in leather jackets take hold of her hand in one that has tree roots tattooed over the knuckles and say things like "come with me. I wanna show you something." She isn't the kind of girl that throws on clothes from the day before and leaves with girls like Beca.

And yet, that's exactly what she's done.

She can barely breathe as they high-tail it down the garden path, hand still wrapped in Beca's as the other girl leads the way, and it's too cold to be wearing a skirt but it's also too late to do anything about that now. At the bottom, they duck around the high hedge that sits as a boarder between the property and the street, and Chloe sees Beca's beat-up, red Geo Metro convertible, engine still running, parked opposite her house. Beca hadn't doubted that she'd come for a second. They cross over to it, letting their hands fall away as they head for their respective doors. When Chloe slips into the passenger seat the first thing she notices is that the radio is playing. Then, as she reaches for her seatbelt and Beca closes her door, reaching for her own, that it isn't the radio at all but rather a CD playing from the after-factory unit she'd watched Beca install. It's two minutes and thirty-six seconds into track six when Beca takes the car out of park, throwing it into reverse, and slings an arm across the back of Chloe's seat, twisting her upper body to look out of the rear window as she speeds out a few feet. Chloe jerks forward when Beca hits the break, then smiles when she shifts into gear, presses down on the gas pedal, and reaches for Chloe's hand again.

Chloe isn't the kind of girl that smiles at the Beca Mitchell's of the world the way she's smiling at this one.

 **Her** Beca.

The Beca who hates everyone and everything in this stupid small town. Except Chloe. The Beca who is callous and cold toward everyone she meets. Except Chloe. The Beca who wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire and would rather pluck her bikini line than waste a single second of her time on you.

Unless you're Chloe.

If you're Chloe, then Beca looks at you like you're the only thing on the planet she can stand. The only thing in the entire universe that **matters**. If you're Chloe, then the only part of Beca that's cold and callous are her fingers against your skin, after she's spent an hour standing outside your window in the rain. Trying to work up the courage to toss the pebble she's been twirling through her fingers. If you're Chloe, then the only fire you're in danger of losing yourself in is the one Beca creates inside of you whenever you're together and there's nothing in the world that Beca would rather do than just **be** with you.

And Chloe doesn't pretend to understand any of it, on either side, which is harder for her to deal with than one might think. Because Chloe is made up of answers. She knows how to explain, how to rationalise. She understands every inch of advanced physics and can recite sonnets from memory.

But she doesn't understand this. How Beca can be this way with her, when she's seen how she is with the rest of humanity. She doesn't understand what makes her special, because Beca doesn't care about how smart she is or what grade she got on her History exam. Chloe could be the dumbest person alive and Beca would still treat her the same.

" _Come on, you have to like_ _ **some**_ _people." Not looking away from the road, Beca had shrugged._

" _Only you." And Chloe had felt her heart skip a beat. "I just like_ _ **you**_ _."_

They've been driving for a few minutes, neither saying a word, when Beca seems to realise that the CD is still playing. She takes her hand back and reaches for the power knob, but Chloe grabs her arm by a leather cuff and stops her just shy.

"Is this one of yours?" She whispers, searching Beca's face as it's illuminated by sickly orange lamplight, yet somehow remains beautiful. Her hand hovers in mid-air, fingers twitching impatiently, and dark eyes flit to their corners to catch Chloe's, then dart back to the road. The streets are empty, there isn't another soul in sight.

"Yeah." It's nearly silent, barely there at all, but it fills the car. Slowly, Chloe laces their fingers together, not taking her eyes off the girl across from her, and pulls Beca's hand back to her lap.

"Can I hear them?" And Beca's talked, briefly, about her mixes. What it is she does – or tires to do, now that her laptop is rapidly slipping into the realm of ancient relics – and how. A little bit about why. What she **wants** to do. About how she's never talked about that with anyone else. And she sees the way Beca hesitates, feels her hold her hand back enough so that it's not quite resting in Chloe's lap, and she waits. Doesn't push. Doesn't ask again. Won't be disappointed if Beca says no.

But she doesn't.

The next track starts and Beca lowers her hand.

They drive for another twenty minutes, out of town and, for all Chloe knows, towards the middle of nowhere. She doesn't really care where Beca is taking her. She idly wonders, brushing her thumb over the ink lines that colour the top of Beca's hand, if that's what love it. Not caring about the destination, just wanting that one specific person beside you on the journey.

" _I heard her family's dirt poor. And that she got like, hepatitis or something for all those nasty tattoos."_

" _ **I**_ _heard that her dad split when he caught her mom cheating and now they're both like, coke addicts living off of welfare."_

" _You're both wrong, except her parents_ _ **are**_ _divorced. There's nothing wrong with_ _ **them**_ _though. Mitchell's made herself a loser all on her own."_

" _Will you all just_ _ **shut**_ _ **up**_ _?! You don't know the first thing about her!"_

And Chloe would choose Beca to travel with every single time.

Even if she **is** swinging off the road and driving them into the middle of a field.

"Um. Should we be..." Chloe trails off and glances over at Beca, whose lips have shifted into that smirk, the one that makes Chloe's insides clench.

"What? The gate was open." And she finds that she can't argue with that logic.

She can see more than she thought she'd be able to, what with the distinct lack of street lights, and she can see that the field is actually littered with rocks and old discarded farming equipment. It makes her feel a bit better about the whole thing, knowing that they didn't just drive into someone's wheat field and ruin their crop. The spot where Beca chooses to stop doesn't seem to have any distinguishing landmark or obvious 'something' that Chloe thinks she should take note of. She can't see anything that Beca might have brought her here specifically to show her. She looks over at the brunette again and finds her chewing on the inside of her cheek, both hands on the steering wheel after extracting hers from Chloe's to put the car into park. Beca's earrings catch the red light from the dash, streaking the silver metal as she tilts her head from side to side like she's trying to make a decision.

"You remember," then she's lifting her fingers to rub the ones running through her lobe, tugging at the flesh, "remember last week? When we um, when we got milkshakes and then went to the park?" Chloe feels a smile tugging at her lips.

" _You push like a girl, Mitchell." The second Chloe said it, Beca grabbed onto the chains holding the swing seat up and held fast, jerking Chloe to a stop and jostling a laugh from her. She tilted her head back to look up into dark blue eyes that glittered like stars made their home in them and inhaled sharply as Beca twisted the chains, turning Chloe around to face her. Beca raised her eyebrows, a playful smirk curving her mouth as she leaned down and the butterflies in Chloe's chest threatened to carry her heart out of her body._

" _I kiss like one, too."_

"Of course I do." Her certainty does little to dissuade Beca's almost palpable anxiety though, which has come on rather suddenly and is just as strange. Chloe didn't know that Beca knew what nerves were beyond that people frequently got on hers. So it's weird to see her twisting her lips to the side like this, hands working back and forth over the steering wheel as she clears her throat.

"Okay. Well." She lets out a deep breath and takes one hand off the wheel. Suddenly the roof is lifting up and back and Chloe's head snaps up to watch as the night sky is revealed. Taking up every millimetre of her vision. And she gasps. "You just, you mentioned that you missed your grandparents' farm because of how the stars look away from all the city grossness, and I know we're not that far from town but-" Chloe leans over the console and reaches out to tilt Beca's head towards her. And she kisses her, slow and steady, partly to stop her rambling but also just because she can. Her skin tingles all over when she feels Beca relax into the kiss and after a few moments she pulls back to press their foreheads together. Eyes closed, she cups Beca's cheek and strokes her thumb along the bone.

"You're amazing." She hears Beca inhale, but it's followed only by silence. Chloe counts it as a victory and places another quick kiss against her lips before sitting back in her seat. She looks up into a sea of stars and her chest constricts painfully.

She used to sleep with the windows open at her grandparents' house, curtains thrown wide and bed situated so that she could gaze out across the golden-yellow canola fields. And she would try and count every twinkling star before her eyelids started to droop. She'd watch the thunderstorms with her grandmother, stars peeking through the grey-black clouds as the lightning tried to chase them away. But they never ran. They were always there, Chloe's constant.

There's nothing as beautiful as the night sky.

"I uh, I brought blankets?" She turns glassy eyes on Beca, who's looking back at her with her cheek pressed against the top of the steering wheel and is risking a shy smile. Chloe feels her heart stutter again.

Well. Almost nothing.

Chloe nods and Beca steps out of the car after shutting off the engine and moves around the to trunk. Chloe follows suit and crosses her arms over her torso. The thin jacket she'd thrown on does its best to fight the slight breeze, but it slips in through the gaps to send a shiver down her spine. And it's not freezing but the wind has enough of a chill to it that she curses the skirt she's wearing for a second time. Beca tucks a pile of blankets under one arm and pulls the trunk closed with her other hand. Then she holds it out to Chloe, who takes it with a smile so wide it makes her face hurt, and they move a short ways away from the car. Beca drops the blankets into a relatively smooth patch of grass, kicking a few rocks out of the way before lying the biggest one out flat. Chloe watches as she tucks her hair behind her ears, lets her eyes linger on her thumb rings and the black and brown lines that disappear under her sleeves. Then Beca's motioning for her to lie down and Chloe's only too happy to oblige. There are two blankets left and she drapes one over Chloe and shrugs out of her jacket because it's kind of stiff and awkward to cuddle in, then takes a seat beside Chloe. Overlapping the last one so that they have to lie close in order to obtain maximum warmth. The act alone makes Chloe feel warmer. Beca lies back beside her, their shoulders touching.

"I wanted to bring like, wine and cheese," Chloe's eyes strain to follow Beca's hand as it brushes her hair back from her face and then rubs along the side of her neck, "and that weird crusty bread that rich people like?" Chloe lets out a chuckle and Beca turns her head to smile at her, bemused. "What?"

"You don't have to try so hard, you know." The moon isn't full but it's big and bright, and it allows Chloe the luxury of seeing Beca Mitchell blush. The brunette lifts her shoulders in a half-shrug, but she doesn't look away.

"You're worth the effort." And it's basically the nicest thing that Beca could ever say about anyone. It breaks and melts Chloe's heart simultaneously, reaches into her chest and squeezes it until she can't breathe. She wonders if she's ever told Beca how beautiful her eyes are. How breathtaking her smile is. How much she loves being with her.

Because she does. She loves everything about Beca.

Chloe swallows hard and searches for Beca's hand beneath the blankets. After a few fruitless seconds, Beca catches on and helps Chloe out with a wry smile. A smile that falters, just a bit and just at the corners, when Chloe scoots closer and puts Beca's hand on her hip. The brunette's lips part and maybe she's about to say something, but then Chloe's hand is at the back of her neck and she's pulling Beca in.

It sounds so cheesy, but whenever she kisses Beca, it always feels like she's kissing her for the first time. There's the same rush of adrenaline at the press of their lips, the same light-headedness that makes her dizzy when one yields to the other's probing tongue. The same wave of heat that sweeps over her body whenever Beca's confidence resurfaces and she takes the lead, like she's doing now. Urging Chloe onto her back so that she can hover over her. Hand clinging to Chloe's hip as she pulls back to kiss along her jawline, sucking at that spot on her neck that makes Chloe whimper unrestrained. Fingers twist into dark hair and Chloe tugs, bringing their mouths back together and kissing her harder, over and over, until they turn quick and desperate. Before Chloe realises when she's doing, she's panting into Beca's mouth and untangling her fingers to grip Beca's hand again. Palm resting over inky, gnarled roots, the curves and knots of which Chloe has spent hours tracing. Then she's moving the hand away from her hip and down over the front of her skirt, until callouses fingers brush the skin of her thigh and she presses Beca's hand flat, then lets go.

When she opens her eyes, Beca is looking at her. **Really** looking at her. Chloe feels the gaze trickle through her and coil at the pit of her stomach, where it waits for someone to nudge it. Release it. Send it flying.

"Chloe." Beca whispers. She makes her name sound like a prayer. "Are you sure-"

"I love you." For an instant, Beca looks like she's just been slapped. Like every thin gust of wind has been taken out of her sails and the air has been ripped from her lungs. Maybe she pales. Maybe sweat breaks out across her forehead. It doesn't matter. Chloe knows that Beca can appear one way but be feeling something different and even though it's maybe one of the hardest thing she's ever had to do, Chloe waits.

But not for long.

Beca catches her lips in a kiss that sets fire to every nerve ending in her body, splitting ends and super-charging parts of Chloe that Chloe didn't know were capable of life. She closes her eyes as tattooed knuckles brush the inside of her thigh and tries to concentrate on kissing back, but her whole body feels like it's throbbing.

She's never been the kind of girl to imagine this moment. That famed 'first time' a person is apparently doomed to remember for the rest of her life. The stories she's heard are always variations of the same. Usually over too quickly, almost always "okay", and more often than not ending with "I wish I'd waited".

Beca's lips whisper over her cheek until Chloe can hear her breathing close to her ear and feel warm gusts drifting over her neck. Beca opens her mouth to say something, Chloe hears and feels that too, but no words leave her. Instead, Beca drags her hand up towards the apex of soft thighs, bunching the skirt in a way that will probably leave wrinkles, and Chloe exhales noisily as the hand bumps and fumbles. The angle is wrong, the clothing choice is wrong, and she's about to tell Beca to just pull the skirt off when the hand is removed. Then returns to dip below the waistband and settle between Chloe's legs. One of them whimpers, both of them maybe, and Chloe's hips give an involuntary little jerk. Her chest feels like someone is sitting on it, Beca's breaths are speedy and shallow, and Chloe's never felt this before. This ache, this longing.

She turns her head, nose brushing Beca's cheek as she lifts her right hand to turn her face. So she can kiss her, soft and slow, like a tentative first. Newly explorative and yet painfully familiar. And Chloe tries to keep the rise and fall of her chest even, tries to stay in the kiss and not react so strongly, she really does. But Beca's fingers creep back and ease below that second waistband, inch over course curls and slip **just so**. Then she's right there, and Chloe's fingers claw at the material covering Beca's shoulder before balling it tightly into a fist as her mouth falls away and opens to release a gasping "ah" of surprise, or pleasure.

Beca kisses her cheek and starts stroking through a gentle rhythm. And it isn't one that Chloe's mind recognises, but her body does, and it moves slowly to the beat as her heart pounds behind her ribs and the starry sky swims behind her eyes. Beca's presence is firm and warm, a reassuring tether that Chloe can cling to. To stop herself from floating away. The breeze stirs her hair as Beca's touch sends shivers slithering along her spine and that coil at the pit of her stomach starts to twitch. Just as Beca's hand shifts and stills, and Chloe feels her blow out a lungful of air before drawing another in and holding it. It's only when she tries to reach for her that Chloe realises her hands are clenched on both sides of Beca, one at her shirt and one at the blankets beside Chloe's leg. With a shaking breath, she lets go of the blanket and bends her leg at the knee, pressing her fingers to Beca's elbow.

And she hopes that says enough because she can't remember how to form words or what they mean, what they sound like. All she knows is Beca. Pressed against her, breathing with her, and then eventually, with an agonising slowness, moving into her.

She cries out, not worrying about how far noise carries out here, and proves her memory to be a liar when Beca's name leaves her.

"Are you-?" She hears the concern in Beca's voice and cuts her off with a vigorous nod of her head, brow furrowed. She's fine, she's fine, she doesn't want her to stop. She squeezes her elbow again and feels Beca press another kiss to her cheek as she eases the rest of the way in and then holds still. Chloe's hand clenches, then rises to grip Beca's upper arm as her hips shift, cant, and Beca's earlier rhythm returns. Slow and deceivingly sure, and Chloe's body dances to it. Rocks to it. She loses herself in Beca's song, lets herself be kissed as fire rises inside of her like a slow-burning torture. Until the tempo trips and changes under Beca's hand and she forgets the steps, as the sky and stars fall around her. She doesn't cry out this time, but wraps her arms tightly around Beca's shoulders and buries her face into the nearest part of her. Her hips jerk and her breath leaves her in a strangled scream of silence.

Beca's pulse hammers wildly against her forehead, harsh puffs of air disturbing stray strands of hair. Chloe's eyelids are heavy, her muscles exhausted, and although everything flares to life again for a second as Beca takes her hand back, she sags against the blankets the second it's free of her skirt. Above her, Beca shifts and turns, then gently urges her onto her side. Chloe manages to roll over and instantly feels her extra exertion rewarded when Beca presses her front flush against her back. Beca winds an arm around her middle, holding Chloe close as her eye slip closed and Beca's nose brushes the shell of her ear.

"I love you, too."

Someone who looks at girls like Beca Mitchell and doesn't see a 'type' or a stigma, or any of the crap people say about them. Someone who feels most like themselves when they're with girls like Beca Mitchell. Someone who accepts people for who they are and doesn't care about anything else.

Someone who falls in love with girls like Beca Mitchell.

That's the kind of girl Chloe is.


End file.
